In this blogcast, Burnes Center for Social Change Senior Fellow Seth Harris is joined by Miren Algorri and Johanna Hester to discuss the recent important contract victory for more than 60,000 child care workers in California.
Watch now to learn more about the lives of child care workers and how the right to organize and bargain collectively has shaped child care provision in California. Seth, Miren, and Johanna will discuss how these workers won this latest contract victory, how organizing and bargaining in California’s child care industry uses a different model than the private-sector model overseen by the federal National Labor Relations Board, and how that model might inform union organizing in the future.
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Johanna Puno Hester is the assistant executive director of UDW/AFSCME Local 3930. She continues her community organizing through the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA), the first and only national organization of Asian Pacific American union members to advance worker, immigrant and civil rights.
Miren Algorri is a dedicated Early Childhood Educator with over 30 years of experience in the field and owner of Little Blossoms Family Childcare, providing bilingual early childhood services to families in San Diego, California.
Episode #12 of the Power Half-Hour has arrived!
The Power Half-Hour is a livestreamed, fast-paced, bi-weekly roundtable with a rotating group of regular guests. Our guests discuss the biggest labor story of the preceding week and the labor story everyone should be talking about over the next two weeks. Joining Burnes Center for Social Change Senior Fellow Seth Harris for this episode are:
Seema Patel - Associate Professor of Law at UCSF Law School
Claudia Irizarry Aponte - Senior Reporter covering labor and work for THE CITY
Bill Samuel - Pro-union consultant for NVG
Catch our next episode live on Power At Work's LinkedIn page on November 11th and soon after on PowerAtWork.US.
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In this blogcast, Burnes Center for Social Change Senior Fellow Seth Harris is joined by David Sirota of The Lever and Luc Triangle of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) to discuss how some wealthy corporations are aggressively engaged in undermining democracy and how the labor movement is fighting back.
In this episode, Seth, David, and Luc will discuss a new report issued by the International Trade Union Confederation — the ITUC — entitled “Corporate Underminers of Democracy 2025”, and new book titled "MASTER PLAN" by David Sirota. Seth, David, and Luc will discuss the report and book, along with other recent developments in the battle to preserve democracy. They will also discuss why worker power and the labor movement are essential to winning that battle.
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Luc Triangle is the General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation. He was elected to that position two years ago, after serving as the General Secretary of IndustriAll European Trade Union for almost a decade. Before that, he was the General Secretary of the European Trade Union Federation for Textiles, Clothing and Leather (ETUF-TCL).
David Sirota is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Lever, a reader-supported investigative news outlet. He was a speechwriter and senior adviser for Senator Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign. He also received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay for Netflix's Don't Look Up.
Episode #11 of the Power Half-Hour has arrived!
The Power Half-Hour is a livestreamed, fast-paced, bi-weekly roundtable with a rotating group of regular guests. Our guests discuss the biggest labor story of the preceding week and the labor story everyone should be talking about over the next two weeks. Joining Burnes Center for Social Change Senior Fellow Seth Harris for this episode are:
McKenna Schueler - News reporter for Orlando Weekly
Ali Bustamante - Professor of Practice at the University of New Orleans
Suhauna Hussain - News reporter for Los Angeles Times
Catch our next episode live on Power At Work's LinkedIn page on October 28th and soon after on PowerAtWork.US.
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In this blogcast, Burnes Center for Social Change Senior Fellow Seth Harris is joined by Sonia R. Vásquez Luna of LIUNA and Steven Gardner of NJ LECET to discuss working-class politics and the state government elections in New Jersey and Virginia that are taking place in 2025.
The panel covered a number of important topics, including whether working-class and worker power issues are part of the candidates’ campaigns. Our guests discussed whether unions in Virginia and New Jersey have an agenda that they want their endorsed candidates to implement if they are elected. They also addressed whether the two Democratic candidates are labor Democrats, focusing on working-class issues. Finally, Seth will ask Sonia and Stever to predict the outcomes of the elections in their states, and the effects that those expected outcomes might have on the 2026 midterm elections that will involve more governors and state legislators, but also every member of the U.S. House of Representatives and one-third of the U.S. Senate.
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Sonia R. Vásquez Luna is the Business Manager of Laborers' public employee local union 572, representing over 3,000 Public Employees and Service Contract members in Maryland, Washington, D.C., Virginia, and North Carolina. Ms. Luna is also a member of the Manassas, Virginia, city council.
Steve Gardner is the Director of the New Jersey Laborers Employers Cooperation and Education Trust, which is a labor-management partnership of the Laborers International Union of North America. Mr. Gardner is the former Executive Director of the New Jersey Assembly Majority Leader’s Office and a former Senior Advisor to Assembly Majority Leader Louis Greenwald. Prior to his service in government, Mr. Gardner administered the New Jersey Laborers’ political action committees.
Episode #10 of the Power Half-Hour has arrived!
The Power Half-Hour is a livestreamed, fast-paced, bi-weekly roundtable with a rotating group of regular guests. Our guests discuss the biggest labor story of the preceding week and the labor story everyone should be talking about over the next two weeks. Joining Burnes Center for Social Change Senior Fellow Seth Harris for this episode are:
Sharon Block - Executive Director at Harvard Law School’s Center for Labor and a Just Economy
Elizabeth Ford - Assistant Professor at Seattle University School of Law
Talia Soglin - Reporter for transportation and labor at the Chicago Tribune
Catch our next episode live on Power At Work's LinkedIn page on October 14th and soon after on PowerAtWork.US.
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In this blogcast, Burnes Center for Social Change Senior Fellow Seth Harris is joined by Randi Weingarten of the AFT and Roy Bahat of Bloomberg Beta to discuss the effort by the American Federation of Teachers and its local largest affiliate in cooperation with three of the leading American artificial intelligence companies to train elementary and secondary school teachers to use AI in their work.
Watch now to see answered: How and why did the deal come together? Seth, Randi, and Roy will talk about what the union and the companies hope to accomplish by training school teachers in the use of AI. They will discuss how the union might try to address AI through collective bargaining over artificial intelligence. And they will discuss whether this arrangement between a very large teachers’ union and some very large companies is getting any pushback from local leaders, members, other unions, or anyone else.
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Randi Weingarten is an American labor leader, attorney, and educator. She has been president of the American Federation of Teachers since 2008, and is a member of the AFL-CIO. She is the former president of the United Federation of Teachers.
Roy Bahat is a venture capitalist, educator, and activist. He is currently the head of Bloomberg Beta, the venture capital arm of Bloomberg. He teaches at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.
Episode #9 of the Power Half-Hour has arrived!
The Power Half-Hour is a livestreamed, fast-paced, bi-weekly roundtable with a rotating group of regular guests. Our guests discuss the biggest labor story of the preceding week and the labor story everyone should be talking about over the next two weeks. Joining Burnes Center for Social Change Senior Fellow Seth Harris for this episode are:
Alexandra Martinez - Senior News Reporter at Prism
Mel Buer - Multimedia freelance journalist and creator of Words About Work
Andrew Ziaja - Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Baltimore School of Law
Catch our next episode live on Power At Work's LinkedIn page on September 30th and soon after on PowerAtWork.US.
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In this blogcast, Burnes Center for Social Change Senior Fellow Seth Harris is joined by Jason Stahl of the College Football Players Association and Tremayne Anchrum Jr., Clemson Tigers alumnus, to discuss the effort currently underway to organize college football players so they will be able to bargain with their schools over their working conditions.
Watch now to see answered: Are college athletes, and college football players in particular, employees of their universities with the rights to organize and bargain collectively under federal and state laws? To better understand this question, Seth, Jason, and Tremayne will discuss the lives of college football players and what their work weeks look like, both during the season and off-season. They will also discuss whether this is the right time to engage in a novel form of worker organizing, given the ferocious union busting and anti-union attitudes of the current President of the United States.
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Jason Stahl is the founder and Executive Director of the College Football Players Association. Jason is a former faculty member in the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.
Tremayne Anchrum Jr. is an American professional football guard. He played college football for the Clemson Tigers and has previously played in the NFL for the Los Angeles Rams, with whom he won Super Bowl LVI. Tremayne serves on the CFBPA's Alumni Member Leadership Committee.
Episode #8 of the Power Half-Hour has arrived!
The Power Half-Hour is a livestreamed, fast-paced, bi-weekly roundtable with a rotating group of regular guests. Our guests discuss the biggest labor story of the preceding week and the labor story everyone should be talking about over the next two weeks. Joining Burnes Center for Social Change Senior Fellow Seth Harris for this episode are:
Kim Kelly - Labor reporter for In These Times magazine and a regular labor columnist for Teen Vogue
Mark Gevaart - Host of the My Labor Radio podcast and an active and activist member of the United Auto Workers
Anne Lofaso - Professor of Law at the University of Cincinnati College of Law and former attorney for the National Labor Relations Board
Catch our next episode live on Power At Work's LinkedIn page on September 16th and soon after on PowerAtWork.US.
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In this episode, Burnes Center for Social Change Senior Fellow Seth Harris will recap all seven of the blogcasts that were a part of the 'What Could Happen Under Trump?' series published on Power at Work.
Watch now as Seth shares clips of some of the most important insights from the 14 guests who generously participated in this series.
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Seth D. Harris is a Distinguished Professor of Practice at Northeastern University and Affiliated Faculty and a Senior Fellow at the Burnes Center for Social Change (and its partner project The GovLab) where he runs the Initiative on Labor and Economic Justice. Prior to joining Northeastern University, Professor Harris was the Deputy Assistant to the President for Labor and the Economy and Deputy Director of the Biden White House’s National Economic Council.
In this very special blogcast, Burnes Center for Social Change Senior Fellow Seth Harris is joined by Governor Tim Walz, the two-term governor of Minnesota and the 2024 Democratic nominee for Vice-President of the United States.
Watch now to learn more about the state of worker power in America, the relationship between the Democratic Party and working-class voters after the re-election of Donald Trump, some of Gov. Walz’s pro-worker accomplishments during his seven years as Minnesota’s governor, and about the elections of 2026 and 2028.
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Timothy James Walz is an American politician, former educator, and Army National Guard veteran serving since 2019 as the 41st governor of Minnesota. He was the Democratic nominee for vice president in the 2024 U.S. presidential election and was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 2007 to 2019.
In this blogcast, Burnes Center for Social Change Senior Fellow Seth Harris is joined by Chris Griswold from American Compass, a leading pro-union conservative policy expert who has been working with Sen. Josh Hawley and others on legislation that, if enacted, may very well benefit workers, worker power, and unions.
Watch now to learn more about how support for unions fits with a larger politically conservative ideology, whether there is broader support for unions in the conservative movement than might be obvious to those of us who are not a part of that movement, and legislation that is currently pending that is the product of some our guest’s policy worker and advocacy.
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Chris Griswold is the policy director at American Compass, a think tank "dedicated to restoring an economic consensus that emphasizes the importance of family, community, and industry to the nation’s liberty and prosperity". Griswold’s writing has appeared in the New York Times, National Affairs, the Dallas Morning News, Newsweek, American Affairs, Comment, and The Hill, among other publications. He was previously a senior advisor in the U.S. Senate.
Episode #7 of the Power Half-Hour has arrived!
The Power Half-Hour is a livestreamed, fast-paced, bi-weekly roundtable with a rotating group of regular guests. Our guests discuss the biggest labor story of the preceding week and the labor story everyone should be talking about over the next two weeks. Joining Burnes Center for Social Change Senior Fellow Seth Harris for this episode are:
Ruben Garcia - Ralph Denton Professor of Law at the University of Las Vegas, Nevada
Matt Alley - Creator of BlueCollarWriter
Bill Samuel - Pro-union consultant, former AFL-CIO Director of Advocacy
Catch our next episode live on Power At Work's LinkedIn page on September 4th and soon after on poweratwork.us.
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In this blogcast, Burnes Center for Social Change Senior Fellow Seth Harris is joined by Lorena Gonzalez and Chrissy Lynch to discuss the new effort by the AFL-CIO’s state federations of labor to study, plan, organize, and bargain around artificial intelligence in the workplace and our society.
Watch now to learn more about this initiative from the presidents of two of our country’s largest state federations of labor, who will be the national co-chairs of a new AFL-CIO task force about AI and worker power. They will discuss how artificial intelligence will affect workers and unions, the labor movement’s efforts to force government to put public policy guardrails in place that protect workers’ right and jobs, the lessons they hope to learn from unions’ experience bargaining over artificial intelligence, and how the labor movement might be able to use artificial intelligence to build worker power.
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Lorena Gonzalez is an American union leader and former politician, serving as the president of the California Labor Federation since 2022. A member of the Democratic Party, she previously served in the California State Assembly from 2013 to 2022, representing the 80th Assembly district. In January 2022, Gonzalez resigned from the state assembly to assume a leadership position in the California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO.
Chrissy Lynch is President of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO. She previously served as the Secretary-Treasurer and Chief of Staff of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, and spent 15 years running the political and legislative departments of the MA AFL-CIO. Before working for organized labor in Massachusetts, she worked on union-led electoral campaigns in California and Massachusetts.
In this blogcast, Burnes Center for Social Change Senior Fellow Seth Harris is joined by Raj Nayak, Candace Archer, and Rebecca Reindel, three policy experts who are closely monitoring and actively opposing the Labor Department’s deregulatory agenda.Watch now to learn more about some of the labor standards and protections that are slated for elimination across the Labor Department. Seth and guests will discuss what happens next, and how the labor movement and members of the Power At Work community can make themselves heard inside the Francis Perkins Building, which is the Labor Department’s national headquarters.Connect with Power At Work: Website: poweratwork.usTikTok: @poweratworkblog Instagram: @poweratworkblog Twitter: / poweratworkblog Facebook: poweratworkblog LinkedIn: power-at-work
Rajesh D. Nayak is a fellow at the Center for Labor and a Just Economy at Harvard Law School and a consultant on labor policy and organizational transitions. Most recently, Raj served as the Assistant Secretary for Policy at the United States Department of Labor, overseeing the Department’s regulatory agenda, forward-looking policy development, and evaluation offices.
Candace Archer is the policy director for the AFL-CIO. She previously worked for Americans for Financial Reform, the American Federation of Government Employees, and National Labor College. Candace has a Ph.D in Political Economy and was an associate professor for more than 15 years.
Rebecca Reindel is the director of occupational safety and health for the AFL-CIO, where she advocates for improved workplace safety and health policies at federal, state, and international levels. She facilitates collaboration among stakeholders to address workplace hazards, testifies before policymakers, and bridges the gap between shop-floor realities and legislative decision-making.
Episode #6 of the Power Half-Hour has arrived!
The Power Half-Hour is a livestreamed, fast-paced, bi-weekly roundtable with a rotating group of regular guests. Our guests discuss the biggest labor story of the preceding week and the labor story everyone should be talking about over the next two weeks. Joining Burnes Center for Social Change Senior Fellow Seth Harris for this episode are:
Claudia Irizarry Aponte - Senior Reporter at THE CITY
Harold Phillips - Host of Working to Live in Southwest Washington and Principal Director of the Labor Radio Podcast Network
David Madland - Senior Fellow and the Senior Adviser to the American Worker Project at American Progress
Catch our next episode live on Power At Work's LinkedIn page on August 14th and soon after on poweratwork.us.
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In this blogcast, Burnes Center for Social Change Senior Fellow Seth Harris is joined by Victor Mineros and Kathy Torres to discuss the nationwide strike by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters against Republic Services, which is a solid waste management company that collects and disposes of garbage and recycling in cities across the U.S.Watch now to learn more about the status of the strike, the kind of work the Teamsters members at Republic Services perform, the biggest issues in the negotiations, and how we can expect this strike to be resolved. Also discussed are some of the strategies the Teamsters have used in this strike to bring pressure on Republic Services to agree to their members’ bargaining demands, and how the public’s reaction to a long-lasting garbage strike had influenced those strategies.
Connect with Power At Work: Website: poweratwork.usTikTok: @poweratworkblog Instagram: @poweratworkblog Twitter: / poweratworkblog Facebook: poweratworkblog LinkedIn: power-at-workVictor Mineros is the Director of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters' Solid Waste and Recycling Division. He got his start with the Teamsters as a rank-and-file UPS package car driver in Los Angeles. He served as a business agent and organizer for Teamsters Local 396 and was appointed an International Representative for the Teamsters Solid Waste and Recycling Division, which is the Teamsters Division he now leads as the Director.Kathy Torres is a Teamsters Local 179 member who has been employed by Republic Services in Ottawa, Illinois, for a year. She is a Class A Driver who has been on strike for three weeks. Kathy is originally from the South Side of Chicago and currently resides in Joliet, Illinois.
In this blogcast, Burnes Center for Social Change Senior Fellow Seth Harris is joined by Javier Ramirez to discuss the future of labor mediation after President Trump shut down the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS). Ramirez takes you inside the negotiating room and explains the critical role labor mediators play.
Watch now to learn about what happens next and why labor mediation is important. Also, learn from one of the nation's foremost mediators how the process works, and more broadly, why collective bargaining can be a model for dispute resolution in American society.
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Javier Ramirez is the Executive Manager of the National Conflict Resolution Service at the Scheinman Institute on Conflict Resolution at Cornell University’s School of Industrial & Labor Relations. Previously, Javier served as Deputy Director of Field Operations at the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS).
Episode #5 of the Power Half-Hour has arrived!
The Power Half-Hour is a livestreamed, fast-paced, bi-weekly roundtable with a rotating group of regular guests. Our guests discuss the biggest labor story of the preceding week and the labor story everyone should be talking about over the next two weeks. Joining Burnes Center for Social Change Senior Fellow Seth Harris for our fifth episode are:
Alex Jacquez - Chief of Policy and Advocacy at Groundwork Collaborative
Mel Buer - Multimedia freelance journalist; Words About Work
McKenna Schueler - News reporter for Orlando Weekly
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Catch our next episode live on Power At Work's LinkedIn page on July 31st and soon after on PowerAtWork.US.